Engineers have invented a way to passively remove snow from solar panels to allow them to keep generating electricity during adverse weather conditions. A team from the University of Toledo in the United States developed a strip coating that causes accumulated snow to slide off solar panels without interfering with their efficiency. Solar panels can generate electricity on cloudy days, however snow cover can completely block their ability to harvest any of the Sun’s energy. This can result in up to 12 per cent loss of electricity generation per year in areas with heavy snowfall. The self-cleaning strips can also be applied to both new and existing solar installations relatively easily. “The strip coatings apply to the lower edge of the panel, resulting in passive snow removal without requiring any energy to operate,” said Hossein Sojoudi, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Toledo. “Our strip coating does not interfere with absorption of sunlight or panel efficiency at any time, does not cause any partial shading or hotspots on the panel, and does not invalidate module warranty and in fact improves the lifetime of the module.” Tests in the US and Japan found that solar panels fitted with the strip achieved more than 5 per cent improved power generation annually. Solar accounted for around 3.4 per cent of electricity generation in the US last year, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration, while more than half of new US electricity-generating capacity in 2023 is forecast to be from solar. Working with industry partners, Dr Sojoudi said he expects thousands of strip coatings to be installed across the US by the end of 2023. “We estimate to reach a production rate of 1 million strip coatings by the end of 2024,” he said. “Our solution is a game-changing technology that can lead to an additional $150 million in additional annual revenue, across states with heavy snowfall... Through the help of our strategic partners, we are delivering on the promise of solar energy all year long.” Read More Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution Hundreds of years after it was discovered, one material is about to change the world World’s first solar-powered hybrid truck tested on public roads Apple explains how the iPhone turned into a camera like none before it UK competition regulator proposes guiding principles to make AI market safe

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Two of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence firms are being sued by celebrities including Sarah Silverman. The writers claim that ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Facebook parent company Meta used their text to train their artificial intelligence systems, without permission. “Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system in March 2023, we’ve been hearing from writers, authors, and publishers who are concerned about its uncanny ability to generate text similar to that found in copyrighted textual materials, including thousands of books,” wrote Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, the lawyers behind the class-action complaint. Mr Saveri and Mr Butterick have already launched legal proceedings against GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant, as well as Stable Diffusion, the popular AI image generator. They call the systems “industrial-strength plagiarists” on a website built to track and promote that work that also includes the complaints that have been filed in California. Last week, the two lawyers launched class-action lawsuits against OpenAI, arguing that it was remixing the “copyrighted works of thousands of book authors—and many others—without consent, compensation, or credit”. That complaint was initially launched on behalf of two authors, Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad, who have since been joined by Sarah Silverman, Chris Golden and Richard Kadrey. The lawsuit alleges that their work had been downloaded from “shadow library” websites that make it possible to download large amounts of text in bulk. They were then used to train the ChatGPT and LLaMa systems made by Meta and OpenAI, it claims. The suit shows that ChatGPT will summarise those authors’ books when prompted, infringing copyright and not giving any of the copyright information about the books, the lawyers claim. The authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material”, the lawsuit says. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent. Meta declined to comment. Read More Will.i.am hails AI technology as ‘new renaissance’ in music Instagram Threads hits 100 million users SpaceX smashes reusable rocket record as Elon Musk makes bold Starship claim

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